The lead-up to the Budget Debate has virtually been all about the public-sector wage bill and the unsustainable domestic debt. Much commentary holds, usually by cold logic, that a wage freeze is a necessary interim arrangement and a large cut in public-sector jobs is ultimately required.

If I read Prime Minister Bruce Golding's broadcast to the nation on Wednesday right, the wage freeze will remain but public-sector jobs won't be cut, not this year at least. But then again, who can one believe?

Modernising the state

I thought we had a consensus that we should be creating and saving jobs, modernising the state, and using the public sector memorandum of understanding (MOU) as the basis for dialogue. Indeed, as the recession bit in last year and layoffs were being regularly announced, trade unions stepped up to negotiate with companies for ways to save jobs. Last December, the Government announced its economic stimulus package. The overall objective was to make loans available to business so that it would be less necessary to lay off workers.

The same scrambling to save public-sector jobs is not evident, except by trade unions. But there was no stimulus package for the public sector.

The public-sector employee is not just an economic statistic. He or she is a vital human person and resource. Many of the people whose jobs we are so cavalierly thinking of chopping are mothers or fathers whose income is the only support for the children in the household. Each household averages 3.5 persons. Every job cut has a multiplier effect that could doom a household. The people you are planning to lay off are people you know. They are the teachers of your children, nurses caring for your sick in the hospitals, lab technicians testing your blood, orderlies bringing the supplies, cleaning up, or wheeling your loved ones to the operating theatre.

They are ambulance drivers and police personnel who are our first line of defence against danger. They are the firefighters we call when there is fire. They are school counsellors to help our difficult children. They are childcare persons running children's homes when there is no one else to care for those children. They are the administrators who file your birth and death records, and your land titles and tax payments. They are the managers of your national health fund, and of children's rights legislation and vaccination programmes. They plan your disaster preparation, inform you about human and crop diseases, and create and manage websites at ministries for your information.

Who is going to run PATH to save the elderly poor, the destitute poor, the disabled and pregnant and lactating mothers when you cut their jobs? Who is going to run the Land Administration and Titling Programme so that farmers can get their titles and have the security of tenure to produce the food we need. Who is going to bring the government primary schools' GSAT passes in English and maths to the level of the private preparatory schools? Who is going to man our children and parenting commissions to build healthier parent-child relationships?

RARE SKILLS AND COMMITMENT

Many of these persons have degrees and can get jobs in the private sector or overseas but they want to serve the public and contribute to better governance. They are interested in childcare, health systems, local government efficiency, fire-service management, testing new teaching methods in schools, experimenting with decentralised management, practising better accounting systems, making joined up governance work, and improving revenue collection. They are studying and researching to make labour laws more effective, public-private partnerships more successful, election systems fairer, community management more inclusive, and human rights more respected.

We need such people who are knowledgeable about Geographic Information System technology to map injury and crime hot spots. Are we going to get rid of the tiny staff at the Ministry of National Security that supports the Peace Management Initiative?

These people are not a burden, debt burden or otherwise. We have invested in their education and training and they are reinvesting in us. They often go beyond the call of duty through the little advice on the side, the extra time spent on your forms, the smile when they see that you need one, the help in giving instructions, the telephone call for you, the research into your application, and all those things that help us through the maze.

Most perform emergency and essential services. We already have shortages in the fire service, not enough police, too many students to teachers per classroom, and long lines at the tax agency. Are we going to privatise the Kingston Public Hospital, schools, water, children's homes, tax collection, the police and army, the post offices, and pay more for those services?

What's the point of talking about human security, justice and education if the offices are empty and we have no one to deliver these services? We have a shortage of midwives. Several health-care centres are already understaffed. We don't have enough nurses and community health aides to immunise our children. We need more family-planning personnel to keep young girls from early pregnancy. We already have too small a staff of social workers and psychologists to investigate signs of abuse during hospital visits, not to mention people to give counselling.

FAILURE OF REVENUE

The real reason we can't pay for the public sector is the private sector is not providing the growth it is supposed to, and most of us are not paying our true taxes. Our debt problem is a revenue problem.

We had come to another consensus, that of public-private partnerships. The private sector should be responsible for growth in the economy. That part of the bargain is yet to be fulfilled. It is not consensus that we lack. It is commitment that we need.

We are in the final stages of the public-sector modernisation vision and strategy programme, 2002-20012. Unfortunately, we have no parallel private-sector modernisation programme to hold that sector to. That is part of the problem.

Economist Dennis Morrison says: "Cutting the public-sector wage bill is no easy task. Teachers, nurses, the security forces and other essential workers make up the vast majority of the establishment. Staff rationalisation is possible in some areas but if the truth be told, there are important areas that are understaffed." He suggests savings on overhead costs as one way out. We certainly have to think a lot harder about this matter. We cannot reflexively repeat the failed neoliberal orthodoxy that the public sector is the problem and should be the first to cut.

PARADIGM OF DEVELOPMENT

We must save our cultural, human and knowledge stocks as part of our new paradigm of development. We must understand what governments do. Let us hope government knows what it is there to do. It is there to serve the public and it needs a public service to do that. We need dialogue within the framework of the MOU. Unilateral wage freezes won't do. Nurses have already protested. Doctors have threatened action. Unilateral action, court action, and police action only indicate a deteriorating situation. Better political management of what is acknowledged to be a difficult Budget is needed.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, Mona, UWI. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.